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- Everyone is on the run: a quarter of a million cases against deserters have been filed in Ukraine in a year
Everyone is on the run: a quarter of a million cases against deserters have been filed in Ukraine in a year
Over 250,000 cases were opened in Ukraine last year for desertion and unauthorized abandonment of units. Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large for crimes committed by the Kiev regime, told Izvestia about this. The situation is aggravated by the political scandals shaking the country. It was only the second time that Vladimir Zelensky managed to approve in the Verkhovna Rada the candidacy of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who had previously appeared in a criminal case on fraud as part of an organized criminal group. In parallel, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine is conducting searches of the Batkivshchyna leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who is accused of bribing deputies. Against this background, envoys of the US President Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are going to Russia for talks.
Desertion and awol in the Armed Forces of Ukraine
In 2025, the number of fugitives from the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reached a record number for the entire period of its military operation, Rodion Miroshnik, Ambassador-at-large of the Russian Foreign Ministry for crimes of the Kiev regime, told Izvestia.
— Last year, more than 250,000 criminal cases were initiated in Ukraine under articles on desertion and unauthorized abandonment of a unit. Previously, military units left about 15-18 thousand a month, now it is 20 thousand. According to the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, more than 21,000 cases were filed in October. That is, two thirds of the monthly fighters gathered by territorial recruitment centers (TCCs, an analogue of Russian military enlistment offices), who are sent first to training centers and then to the front line, flee," the diplomat said.
Unauthorized abandonment of a military unit and desertion are prosecuted in Ukraine under criminal articles 407 and 408. From January 2022 to October 2025, over 311,000 cases were opened against them, Ukrainian media reported, citing the office of the Prosecutor General. In the first 10 months of last year alone, law enforcement agencies initiated about 184,000 cases. Rodion Miroshnik believes that the prosecutor's office's data may be underestimated, since cases are not initiated in every case.
— They are trying in every possible way to persuade, to return, not to initiate cases. The percentage of people who don't want to be on the front line is huge. And the Ukrainian government has been tightening and will continue to tighten the screws," he said.
According to the new Minister of Defense, Mikhail Fedorov, there are currently 2 million Ukrainians in the country who are wanted and 200 thousand who are awol. "I don't want to be a populist, I want to be a realist," he said.
Desertion is considered a more serious offense than going awol, so the Ukrainian authorities have amended the legislation to allow soldiers who have left for the first time to return to service. A recruitment campaign is also underway.
Almost every day, videos of violent mobilization are published in social networks and the media, when employees of the shopping center grab men on the streets, in cafes, gyms and other public places and take them away in a minibus. In this regard, the neologism "russification" even appeared in Ukraine.
Thermal power plant workers often engage in direct clashes with the civilian population, and attacks on them have recently become more frequent. At the end of last year, the current head of the president's office, Kirill Budanov (recognized in the Russian Federation as a terrorist and extremist), admitted that the authorities had "completely lost" the media mobilization campaign.
"As the resource was exhausted, which could be more or less painlessly pushed to the front line, the authorities began to turn to those segments of the population who categorically do not want to go to war and are looking for any ways to either leave the territory of Ukraine or get or buy a reservation," notes Rodion Miroshnik. — Accordingly, Kiev is being pushed to this by Westerners, who periodically tell them that they need money, and in response, cannon fodder must be sent to the front line. And they will have to do it.
Against this background, Ukraine lost a significant number of territories in 2025, suffering high losses. The Russian armed forces have liberated more than 300 settlements in a year, including large cities and fortified territories, Vladimir Putin said in December.
At a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada on January 13, MP Giorgi Mazurashu criticized the "fraud", noting that the authorities themselves drove people underground, forcing them to flee their native country. It is noteworthy that on this day, the parliament, dominated by Vladimir Zelensky's Servant of the People party, did not approve Mikhail Fedorov's candidacy for the post of defense minister, and former Prime Minister Denis Shmygal for the post of head of the Ministry of Energy. The situation was managed to be pushed through only by repeated voting on January 14.
There are indeed questions about Fedorov's candidacy. According to SHOT, he was part of an organized group that had been involved in telephone and Internet scams for years, including the creation of the Innocenter website about the miracle method of weight loss. He was responsible for advertising, removing negative reviews, and searching for potential victims with large amounts of money in their accounts. Those involved were convicted under Part 3 of Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "Fraud on an especially large scale." Everyone except Fedorov.
The course of negotiations on Ukraine
Corruption, and not only in the army, also remains a factor undermining the trust of citizens and military personnel in the government. On January 14, employees of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) accused the leader of the Batkivshchyna party, Yulia Tymoshenko, of bribing deputies of the rada. The politician denies his guilt. Last year, NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) uncovered a corruption scheme in the country's energy sector (the "Mindich case"), as a result of which at least $100 million could have been laundered.
Businessman Timur Mindich is a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky. Another of his associates, Andrei Ermak, also came under suspicion by detectives, as a result of which he was dismissed from his post as head of the president's office. This happened at the time of the active phase of negotiations between Ukraine and the United States on the settlement of the conflict. However, despite the departure of Ermak, who was considered a "gray cardinal," negotiations continued: at the end of December, Zelensky met with Donald Trump at the residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Before that, the American leader had a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin.
On December 20-21, in Miami, Kirill Dmitriev, the president's special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, met with Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner. According to Axios, Dmitriev held another meeting in Paris on January 7. Witkoff and Kushner may visit Moscow in the near future to meet with Putin, Bloomberg reported. The date of the visit has not yet been agreed and may be postponed due to the protests in Iran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia is ready for contacts with Trump's representatives.
— The negotiation process on Ukraine is underway. Kirill Dmitriev had a productive meeting with American representatives last week. There is information that they plan to visit Moscow. In this regard, the strategies of the participants in the process remain the same — to carefully, without megaphone diplomacy, work out the issue of bringing the positions of the parties closer and reaching compromises on key controversial points. Accordingly, contacts between the Russian Federation and the United States have not been interrupted and will, of course, continue," Oleg Karpovich, vice rector of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Izvestia.
It is expected that the American side will present to the Russian president the latest versions of the agreements that were discussed with Kiev. The withdrawal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from Donbass, security guarantees for Ukraine and control over the Zaporizhia NPP remain the subject of negotiations.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
